The First Vet Emergency

Auggie started acting strange and we panicked!

    It continued to downpour that dreary afternoon as I brushed Auggie in his stall. The sound of the rain on the metal roof of the old barn drowned out the usual noises of the horses in their stalls and created a muffled ambience as light began to fade. It was now October and fall was well under way, with cooler temperatures and shorter days. The weather of the last few days seemed to reflect the mood that I was in over losing yet another one of my childhood friends.

    I spent quite a bit of time grooming and toweling Auggie in the damp, heavy air of the old barn where he was housed. Water began to trickle down the center of the aisle from the back side of the building as Diane and Sharon rushed to each stall with hay for the evening. The horses always became agitated when dinner was being served and Auggie had picked up on this phenomenon in the weeks since he had been with us.

    With his mane braided and his coat finally cleaned, I began to pack up my brushes to go home. As Auggie swirled around his stall anticipating his portion of hay, I noticed something very odd about his behavior. He started to back into the corner of the stall and kick at his belly while stretching his front legs out like he was about to pee, but nothing happened. He continued to do this until he peed just a tiny bit and then circled around the stall again. I stopped Diane to observe what he was doing.

    "Hey, do you think that's weird? He just started doing that now," I said pointing into his stall.

    "Hmm. I don't know, I haven't seen him do that before.  He's been acting fine. He doesn't seem colicky or anything?" she mused. 

    "No, he doesn't seem colicky. He's gone to the bathroom and his stomach has been growling."

    "Huh. Are his gums pink? Let's look," she said as she set aside the hay nets in her hands. I held his halter as Diane flipped up Auggie's top lip briefly before he threw his head back. In the dim light of the old stable, we could see that his gums had perfect coloration which indicated good blood flow. Something seemed strange but I couldn't put a finger on it. Perhaps he had some sort of bladder infection I thought.

    "Let's see if he'll eat," Diane said grabbing several laps of hay for him. As she tossed them into the corner of his stall, he immediately attacked them and began munching. As he did this, a strange thing happened. He stretched out and proceeded to pee as he chowed down on his hay, as if nothing had ever been wrong in the first place. Diane shrugged, saying that we should probably let Amy know to keep an eye on him, but he was eating, passing manure and peeing, so there wasn't much to do about it at the moment. 

    I packed the truck to leave and texted Amy about the strange behavior we had seen from Auggie. As I pulled out of the driveway into the monsoon, I figured I could make one last stop before going home for the night. Still feeling the disillusionment of Julie's passing, I had to at least find a way to let the family know that I cared, so I headed to my Church's rectory to pick up a mass card in her honor. It was the only thing I could do at the moment, maybe to make myself feel a bit better for being absent him her time of need. 

    I rolled up to the front entrance of the Saint Alphonsus church Rectory in the gloom and dashed up the stairs to door. My daughter had attended the school attached to the church since kindergarten, so the place was familiar and comforting, even though I wasn't the best at making it to Sunday mass every week. My mother had picked up Cheyenne from school, and I told no one that I was making this stop on the way home; this was a personal errand. Julie's family had set up a GoFundMe page to help support her daughter and husband, and while I had given money towards that, it didn't seem to be enough in my mind.

    The secretary opened the door for me, just fifteen minutes prior to closing the office, and let me come in from the rain. She was a pleasant, heavyset woman, working by herself in the quiet reverence of the church administrative offices. 

    "Hi," I said, "I'm Carolyn and I'm a parishioner here. I need a mass card for my friend who just passed away this morning."

    "Oh I'm so very sorry to hear that! Of course! Of course, we can get that for you, just over here on this table we have our cards, and we can have mass said for your friend, " she said gesturing to a roundtable in her office.

    I entered the room and proceeded to give the woman the necessary details for mass to be offered in Julie's memory. She filled out the card and the papers for the church, giving me her condolences as she wrote. I still didn't feel that I was doing enough, and the guilt was bubbling up into my throat. As I turned away, card in hand, I felt that there must be some way to turn this around. I hadn't gotten that one last chance to see a friend; how many times could that happen? Or was that better? Is that what Julie would have wanted? To be remembered the way we were back at camp, and not as a cancer patient. Maybe I was blessed with good memories of adolescence.

    As I went home, I tried to rest my mind. I was concerned about Auggie and consumed by the fact that my friends were no longer with me; the rain kept coming and it was becoming tiresome at that point. I hadn't heard anything back from Amy that night, but I focused on sharing Julie's GoFundMe page on Nextdoor.com as much as I could. I figured that someone on there might recognize her from high school, and every little bit helps financially. Over the next few days, the outpouring of support for Julie astounded me; complete strangers saw the post and donated whatever they could towards the cause. Some people commented, saying that they had known her or her mother in the past and that they wanted to help. The kindness of others simply blew my mind.

    At about 5:30 in the morning I received a text from Amy regarding message I had sent her the previous afternoon. As I read the text, I began to feel a new wave of panic rush over me,

    "I see what you mean about Auggie. He started doing it when we were doing the morning feeding. That's really strange, I agree."

    "I know, I haven't seen him do that before, but it didn't seem like colic or anything you would normally expect," I responded.

     "Do you want me to call the vet out?"

    "Yes, if he's still doing that behavior I think we should get the vet over the first chance they have. Just let me know when they are coming."

    I finished preparing for the day and packing Cheyenne's school lunch. My mind was now a flurry of possible diagnoses- bladder infections, kidney stones, obstructed urethra; all of which would be serious and possibly costly to treat. I was considerably more worried about Auggie's condition since Amy had observed something strange as well. I wasn't imagining it or being neurotic, something was very wrong and now the agonizing wait for the vet had begun. My thoughts raced as I left the house for the day, everything seems to happen all at once or not at all I shrugged. This was life.